A DEBAUCHED MAN
Saves the devil a labour and leads himself into temptation, being loth
to lose his good favour in giving him any trouble where he can do the
business himself without his assistance, which he very prudently
reserves for matters of greater concernment. He governs himself in an
arbitrary way, and is absolute, without being confined to anything but
his own will and pleasure, which he makes his law. His life is all
recreation, and his diversions nothing but turning from one vice, that
he is weary of, to entertain himself with another that is fresh. He
lives above the state of his body as well as his fortune, and runs out
of his health and money as if he had made a match and betted on the
race, or bid the devil take the hindmost. He is an amphibious animal,
that lives in two elements, wet and dry, and never comes out of the
first but, like a sea-calf, to sleep on the shore. His language is very
suitable to his conversation, and he talks as loosely as he lives.
Ribaldry and profanation are his doctrine and use, and what he professes
publicly he practises very carefully in his life and conversation; not
like those clergymen that, to save the souls of other men, condemn
themselves out of their own mouths. His whole life is nothing but a
perpetual lordship of misrule and a constant ramble day and night as
long as it lasts, which is not according to the course of nature, but
its own course; for he cuts off the latter end of it, like a pruned
vine, that it may bear the more wine although it be the shorter.
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